Tag: perpetual war

President Trump Seems Itching for Multiple Wars in the Western Hemisphere

Donald Trump seems to be following through in his second term as president on the threat of a United States war on Venezuela he made in his first term. Significant US military force has been recently placed near Venezuela ready for attack, the US has already destroyed several boats near Venezuela and killed most the people on them in a claimed effort to counter “narco-terrorism,” and Trump last week said he has authorized Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation and is considering attacks on land in Venezuela.

The justification the Trump administration presents for all this is that it is part of the US government’s drug war, an endeavor that has meted out death, destruction, and rights abuses decade after decade as drug use in America continues along. The Trump administration also re-characterizes alleged drug transport as “narco-terrorism” in an effort to gain legal and public support for hostile actions.

Trump seems not to be content to go to war against just Venezuela whose President Nicolás Maduro he has proclaimed is a drug kingpin. Trump on Sunday pegged the president of neighboring Western Hemisphere nation Colombia with the same accusation used against Maduro. Here is how Trump put it in a Sunday post at his Truth Social page:

President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia. It has become the biggest business in Colombia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America. AS OF TODAY, THESE PAYMENTS, OR ANY OTHER FORM OF PAYMENT, OR SUBSIDIES, WILL NO LONGER BE MADE TO COLOMBIA. The purpose of this drug production is the sale of massive amounts of product into the United States, causing death, destruction, and havoc. Petro, a low rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America, better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely. Thank you for your attention to this matter! ~ President Donald J. Trump

Notice Trump’s comment that the Colombia president “better close up these killing fields immediately, or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” That is a threat of war.

Will Trump stop with just these two countries in a Western Hemisphere war spree? Trump, after regaining the presidency earlier this year, took actions in apparent preparation for war on Mexico as well – actions in line with Trump’s comments since his first term supportive of war on Mexico and argued to be for protecting Americans from drugs and terrorism as with wars on Venezuela and Colombia.

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A Minefield in Gaza

After two years of unrelenting war, the world breathed a sigh of relief on October 9 as the first phase of Trump’s 20 point plan for Gaza went into effect. But, on October 13, while hostage release celebrations were taking place in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, five children playing amid the rubble near Al-Shifa hospital were injured, two severely, when an unexploded ordinance (UXO) went off.

In December 2023, only two months into the war, the Wall Street Journal called Israel’s actions in Gaza the “most devastating urban warfare in the modern record”. By April 2024, Euromed estimated that Israel had dropped over 70,000 tons of explosives on the area, an amount exceeding all of the bombs dropped on London, Dresden, and Hamburg throughout World War II. This month, as the fragile ceasefire came into effect, the Gaza Government of Media office estimated the tonnage to be 200,000, the equivalent of thirteen Hiroshimas.

According to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), around 5% to 10% of the munitions used by Israel in the war in Gaza failed to detonate on impact. But, the duds are far from innocuous. Like the anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines being used right now in Ukraine and Myanmar, the UXO lie in wait, seemingly innocuous, ready to kill or maim whoever, soldier or civilian, adult or child, is unfortunate enough to come upon them.

The first widespread use of landmines occurred during the American Civil War, when the Confederate army invented and instituted them as an affordable way to compensate for shortages of resources and manpower. An immediate debate arose on the ethics of their use.

In WWI, an extensive number of anti-tank landmines were laid by the Germans. When the Armistice Agreement was signed in 1918, it obligated Germany to provide the locations of the mines and assist in their removal.

In WWII, landmines were used heavily by both sides. After Germany lost the war, their POWs were forced by Allied troops to undertake the extensive and dangerous job of removing the mines. In Denmark, around 1,000 Germans, many of them mere teenagers, were either killed or maimed in the process.

1.5 million mines were laid during the 1967 war by Israeli, Jordanian, and Syrian forces. It wasn’t until 2011, following the tragedy of an 11-year-old Jewish-Israeli boy losing his leg after tripping a leftover mine while playing outside his home in the Golan Heights, that cleanup efforts began in earnest.

In 1992, Human Rights Watch and five other NGOs launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and in 1997, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (known informally as the Ottawa or Mine Ban Treaty) was signed by 122 countries.

Today, 165 countries, more than three-quarters of the world’s states, are party to the convention. Jordan joined in 1998, and Palestine in 2017. Israel, however, insists that, due to security needs, they are unable to commit to a total ban on landmines.

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Russia recognizes Ukraine’s independence but not its ‘Nazi’ regime – Lavrov

Moscow recognizes Ukraine’s independence but not the “Nazi” regime in Kiev bent on the “extermination of everything Russian,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with Hungarian YouTube channel Ultrahang aired on Sunday, the top diplomat said today’s Ukraine differs greatly from the one whose sovereignty Moscow supported after the fall of the USSR.

“We recognize the independence of Ukraine, no doubt about this, [but] we recognized Ukraine on the basis of its own Declaration of Independence and Constitution… which defined Ukraine as a non-nuclear, neutral, non-bloc country guaranteeing the rights of all national minorities,” Lavrov said.

He stated that following the 2014 Maidan coup, Ukraine turned into “a bluntly Nazi regime” that “shows open contempt for anything Russian,” including its history, media, culture, religion, education, and language.

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POKROVSK CAULDRON: Russian Forces Tighten the Noose Around Donetsk Stronghold — 10,000 Ukrainian Troops Face Complete Encirclement

The cauldron is boiling.

After months of fighting, the Donetsk bastion of Pokrovsky has been encircled and put in a ‘Cauldron’, and the final Stages of the Battle for Krasnoarmeysk (Russian name) is ongoing.

And, unless the Ukrainian command acts fast, 10,000 Kiev troops are about to be completely encircled.

We have been reporting on the battle for Pokrovsk, as you can read (from July) Russians Conquer a Dozen Settlements in a Week – In Eastern Donetsk, Northern Kharkov and Southern Zaporozhie – Moscow Forces Encircle Key Ukrainian Stronghold Pokrovsk (VIDEOS);

and SIEGE OF POKROVSK: Russian Forces Encircle Key Stronghold, Reach Its Outskirts – City is a Key Logistics Hub and the Last Fortified Bastion Before the Dnieper River (VIDEOS).

The Russian Tsentr (Center) group is leading the final assault for the key Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration.

Ukrainian forces are rapidly approaching a critical situation, and their defense has s become scattered.

Clearing operations are underway south of the railway.

Importantly, Pokrovsk is cut off from supplies. The E-50 highway to Pavlograd is under dense fire control by the Russians.

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The Neocons Have Finally Found a Way Into MAGA Hearts

“Neocon” may have become a dirty word, but after a few years, their agenda is back in play.

And no doubt many of their players, too.

After being banished to the wilderness for plunging the nation into a 20-year war, the neocons fell flat with the Trump base in Ukraine and lost the thread with MAGA in Israel. Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere are another matter. The neocons have evolved, and regime change is back on the menu.

How? Rather than pushing “democracy” and “freedom” like George W. Bush’s famous second inaugural speech at the height of the Iraq War, neoconservatives have adopted the prevailing MAGA/New Right language of “America First” to inject regime change back into fashion.

If you don’t think so, just listen to what Marco Rubio – once a reliable foot soldier for neoconservative foreign policy on Capitol Hill since his election to the Senate in 2011 – has to say about Nicolas Maduro today. He insists that Maduro is “not the President of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government,” but a “corrupt, criminal and illegitimate (regime)” that undermines “America’s national security interests.”

Meanwhile, he calls Maduro an “enemy of humanity” who “has strangled democracy and grasped at power in Venezuela” and announced a $50 million bounty on his head. Since then, there has been a massive military buildup in the region and talk of bringing the lead narco terrorist to justice.

This hasn’t been lost on observers, even in conventional Right circles. “You thought I was joking when I said Trump was the greatest neoconservative president we’ve had in ages,” National Review’s Jim Geraghty exclaimed in a recent column.

Supporters of Trump say the president is still allergic to “regime change wars” and that the administration is only interested in short, sharp actions against drug cartels and Maduro. Yet Trump hasn’t fully denied that aspiration either. In fact, he teases a little about it every day. The President has even confirmed that he gave the CIA – who know a thing or two about assassinations and toppling governments – the authority to conduct covert operations in and around Venezuela.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.

So what is different about today? Trump’s populist base elected him because he espoused a nationalism that promised a foreign policy focused on American interests and our own backyard: cracking down on illegal immigration and drugs being top priorities. Going after cartels fits neatly into a “return of the Monroe Doctrine” and “pivot back to the Western Hemisphere.”

“Both inside and out of the administration there are many MAGA-aligned thinkers who want a more regionalized strategy in place of a globalist or imperial American foreign policy. They tend to be for less engagement with the Middle East and Europe and more attention to the Western Hemisphere,” noted Modern Age editor Daniel McCarthy.

“Where that outlook intersects with neoconservatism is that the neocons have, of course, long wanted regime change and the promotion of liberal democracy in Latin America. Since there’s a fight on to define what the Monroe Doctrine means in the 21st century, the neocons have an advantage in that they already have a plan for Latin America and for Venezuela in particular.”

McCarthy points to neoconservative Elliott Abrams, who has probably set the record for Washington comebacks since his conviction in the Iran-Contra Affair. Abrams was in the thick of Reagan’s destabilizing attempts to overthrow communists in Latin America in the 80s. He has shown up in both Republican and Democratic administrations, always promoting regime change as a way to advance American interests in the region. He now runs the neoconservative Vandenberg Coalition and drove Trump’s failed policy to overturn Maduro during his first administration (Rubio was in on that too). Abrams is not on the inside today, but has been all over mainstream media for his quick takes on recent anti-narco military operations.

“There was less emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine in the first term, but now the neocons interested in Latin America are adapting their ideas for a Monroe Doctrine framework, and since there isn’t a fully articulated alternative on the non-neocon MAGA right, the neocons are in a position to influence the agenda,” charged McCarthy.

One may wonder who “they” are when the most visible neocons of the early 21st Century are now Never Trumpers who seemingly spend most of their time tweeting about “No Kings” and the total collapse of American democracy. Bill Kristol, David Frum, Elliot Cohen, Jen Rubin – they are part of a domestic commentariat who, even if they supported what Trump was doing in the Caribbean, wouldn’t say so publicly (except for maybe on Gaza).

The folks at the reliable neoconservative Hudson Institute, however, are railing against the realists (they call “isolationists”) in Trumpworld on Ukraine and Israel, and are now dipping their toe into the Americas. They hosted regime change advocates in a recent forum, where CSIS’s Eric Farnsworth trotted out the new language in support of regime change:

“I think in the biggest sense, to have Venezuela free and prosperous and return to democracy that is absolutely in the U.S. interest, to say nothing of, if I can say, the interests of Colombia and Brazil and Peru and Ecuador and Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean countries and the countries, frankly, in Europe where, like Spain, where Venezuela has intervened in elections and things like that.”

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CIA tried to recruit Winston Churchill – Telegraph

The CIA tried to recruit British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill to spread propaganda broadcasts on the agency-backed Radio Liberty in the 1950s, in an effort to undermine the Soviet Union, The Telegraph has reported.

At the height of the Cold War, the CIA-funded radio station targeted the Soviet Union with propaganda broadcasts, while its sister organization, Radio Free Europe, focused on Moscow’s allies. Both were covertly controlled and funded by the US intelligence agency until 1972 and merged into RFE/RL four years later.

In 1958, Radio Liberty’s controllers suggested riding the wave of “revisionism” gripping the Soviet Union at the time, and taking advantage of emerging ideological divisions within Marxism-Leninism to undermine the government, The Telegraph wrote on Saturday, citing declassified CIA documents.

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Japan Will Play A Much Greater Role In Advancing The American Agenda In Asia

Putin’s senior aide Nikolai Patrushev gave an interview to Arguments and Facts about Japan on the 80th anniversary of its unilateral surrender in World War II in early September that’s important to raise wider awareness of after the appointment of its new ultra-nationalist prime minister. He began by reminding everyone that “Tokyo zealously cultivated an open racism that surpassed German Nazism in its absurdity and inhumanity. And the sovereignty of other countries was considered an empty phrase there.”

Patrushev then touched upon Imperial Japan’s failed geopolitical plot to turn the Sea of Japan into an inland sea and even seize Kamchatka so as “to gain undivided possession of the Sea of Okhotsk” too. He assessed that Japan’s current campaign for “’justice’ on the issue of the so-called ‘northern territories’” is just a disguise for a similar plot to obtain control over new marine (seafood and mineral) resources. Patrushev accordingly warned that it’s planning to make new claims to Russian maritime territory.

The emerging trend of misportraying Imperial Japan as the “victim” of Soviet aggression in 1945, despite the Allies having agreed in advance that the USSR would open up the Manchurian Front three months after the Nazis’ defeat, is meant to lend false legitimacy to these claims. This threat shouldn’t be downplayed, Patrushev warned, since Japan’s “Self-Defense Forces” de facto function as national armed forces, are NATO-backed, and are “systematically building a powerful and ultra-modern submarine fleet”.

In his words, “Japan is one of the most powerful naval powers in the world today. Its fleet is capable of solving almost any task even in remote areas of the World Ocean. The Japanese Navy closely cooperates with the NATO fleet, and at any moment they can be integrated into Western coalition formats.” Even more concerning are Japan’s nuclear breakthrough capabilities: “it is capable of creating its own nuclear arsenal and means of delivery in a few years” if the decision is made, according to Patrushev.

Nevertheless, these threats shouldn’t be exaggerated either since Russia is “building up defensive potential in the Far East and strengthening our naval power in the Pacific Ocean”, thus meaning that it’s more than capable of defending itself from Japan. Rather, “The threat lies not so much in the destroyers and missiles, but in the fact that the national consciousness of the Japanese is shifting from pacifism to rabid revanchism”, which he attributed to a long-running “aggressive propaganda” campaign.

The purpose is to precondition the population to accept the risks associated with Japan more actively advancing US interests in the region via the “Squad” (those two, Australia, and the Philippines), which is envisaged as the core of AUKUS+, the US’ desired NATO-like regional analogue. Japan’s place in the US’ Chinese Containment Coalition just rose as a result of the unexpected Sino-Indo rapprochement, prior to which the US wanted India to play a complementary role, so Japan is now at the forefront of this effort.

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Over 100 ‘BSL-4’ Bioweapons Labs Now Operate Worldwide, With More Under Construction

Over the past few years, the world has entered a new era of high-containment biological research—marked by a dramatic expansion of laboratories capable of working with the most lethal viruses known to man.

These include facilities built to the highest biosafety standard, Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4), and they carry not only the broken promise of defending us from pandemics but also the danger of enabling bioweapons creation, whether by accident or deliberate misuse.

Strikingly, a May 2025 Journal of Public Health study found that more than 90% of the countries with at least one BSL-3 laboratory lacked oversight or regulation of dual-use research of concern.

Dual-use research refers to experiments that can be used for good (e.g., alleged drug development) but also for harm (e.g., creating a bioweapon).

The Journal of Public Health study aimed to investigate the worldwide distribution of BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories.

Alarmingly, it found that:

“No international organization has a comprehensive register or global oversight of Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3)/BSL-4 laboratories. Different countries use different standards for designation of pathogens and laboratories.”

“More than 90% of the countries with at least one BSL3 laboratory have no oversight/regulations regarding dual-use research.”

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China, Russia use ‘asymmetric advantage,’ unleash sex warfare to seduce US tech execs, steal secrets: report

China and Russia have deployed attractive women to the United States to seduce unwitting Silicon Valley tech executives as part of a “sex warfare” operation aimed at stealing American technology secrets, according to a report.

Industry insiders told The Times of London that they have been approached by would-be honeypots — some of whom have even managed to ensnare their targets by marrying them and having children.

Chinese and Russian agents are also using social media, startup competitions and venture capital investments to infiltrate the heart of America’s tech industry, the report said.

“I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman,” James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at risk-assessment firm Pamir Consulting, told The Times.

“It really seems to have ramped up recently.”

A former US counterintelligence official who now works for Silicon Valley startups told The Times that he recently investigated one case of a “beautiful” Russian woman who worked at a US-based aerospace company, where she met an American colleague whom she eventually married.

According to the former counterintelligence official, the woman in question attended a modelling academy when she was in her twenties. Afterward, she was enrolled in a “Russian soft-power school” before she fell off the radar for a decade — only to re-emerge in the US as an expert in cryptocurrency.

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NATO state brings back military draft

Croatia’s parliament has voted to reinstate compulsory military service, ending a 17-year hiatus. The Balkan country abolished the draft in 2008, shifting to a fully professional army.

The move comes amid a broader trend among NATO and EU members of reviving conscription and boosting military budgets, citing current geopolitical tensions, particularly the Ukraine conflict.

Under the new law, around 4,000 recruits will be called up each year in five groups for two months of basic training at military facilities across Croatia, state broadcaster HRT reported on Friday. The program – estimated to cost €23.7 million annually – will begin in early 2026. Participants will receive around €1,100 per month, plus travel and leave expenses, and credited work experience.

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